How & why I decided to become a Squarespace web designer

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My friend, Paige

Over the years, working from home, I’ve made lots of shall we say, long-distance friends in the industry.

And one of them, Paige Brunton, she is launching a free 3-day challenge called the Profitable & Productive Web Designer Bootcamp (hosted 2x a year)!

She only does this twice a year, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about how her general education, courses, freebies, –all the things– has helped me in my life over the past few years.

College & my first "real" design job

In 2012, I was wrapping up my college education. I got my first job in the graphic design area which paid more than $10 an hour. I am not kidding, and I oddly was able to stay in that job for like eight and a half years. I didn't go full-time freelance until 2020 and that was only because the pandemic hit and I was offered a furlough.

By that point, I was side hustling and knew that I can make it a full-time business. In 2018, I took Paige's Square Secrets™️ and Square Secrets Business™️ courses. I believe I bought them both as a bundle but maybe not. Maybe I did the first one by itself. Realized I loved it for myself and then bought the Square Secrets Business™️ course after that. It's been years now and I don't remember.

At any rate, a lot of what came to do in my business is still based on what I learned in those courses foundationally. The two-week process I'm still doing, which I love. I find that I get bored with projects after a few weeks. So that gives me wiggle room to do something that I really like doing with clients that I really love for a short period of time, and then move on to the next thing.

Also, there's a lot of stuff that's, that needs to be done, and I'm a solopreneur and I don't really have time to draw projects out for long periods of time anyway.

My (short) backstory

A little bit of a backstory I guess, on me. If you're new around here if you're a new face. I used to play on my dad's computer growing up for fun. Like, you know, not all the time, but when I got bored and I was inside the house, I liked to play in Publisher of all the things, Microsoft Publisher. And I used to make flyers, magazine covers, my own posters of stuff that I couldn't find in stores. And I would print out multiple, like eight and a half by 11 sheets and like cut and paste them together and make my own 24 by 36 posters because I'm a total nerd. Apparently, I had no idea that graphic design was even an option.

And then when I went to college thinking that I was going to be an interior design major, took one semester of that, and decided I did not want to, after all, know how to keep up with building codes. As it turns out, I would prefer to actually code in the website world. Anyway, that's like a whole other thing.

So I decided to switch my major. Thankfully my college advisor, said 'Obviously, playing a Publisher, you have to be a graphic designer,' so I switched over to the graphic design program and that was all she wrote after that. So did that for a few years. We moved around a lot.

I started in community college and then I went to state college and then we actually transferred states and that was actually like over a thousand miles apart, so that was a big move.

I went to college there for a while, then we moved back. So there were a lot of curriculum changes.

It took me longer than I wanted to get through that program. But got my first job as an in-house designer in 2006. My very first one, I was making $6 an hour back then. No benefits. Hourly work. No time off. Yeah, all the things.

So I did that for a while. When my husband & I moved out to Wyoming, I got to keep that job but because I would now be out of state, they changed me to remote work as an “independent contractor” and that was my first taste of what it would be like to work for myself. So I decided at some point I would figure out how to do this for myself.

I never really thought that I would do it literally for myself. I thought like I would just find another company and do it for them.

As it turns out though, I'm not really cut out to work for other people on a long-term basis, even though my resume would probably tell you otherwise. As I said, my last in-house design job started in 2012 and I worked there through mid-2020, so it was about eight and a half years that I was there.

But for the last few years, I just was feeling burnt out. I was starting to feel like the general corporate vibe was not a fit for me. It felt toxic to my creativity. And I wanted to do other things and build my own dream.

I was also starting to feel like I would never get to the income amount that I wanted unless I moved to a big city and started working for Disney or Pixar or something and I didn't wanna do that.

I also didn't wanna work for a giant marketing agency and pitch projects to Nike and stuff like that just was way far up the business ladder than I wanted to be.

Because we were broke and living paycheck to paycheck very much, I started freelancing.

So I started doing all these side jobs, right? I was taking like logo design, t-shirt design, like whatever.

And I don't even remember what I charged per hour, but I would guess like $25. And I remember feeling pretty guilty about that because it was more than I was even making per hour in my full-time design job. And I did that for a few years.

Finding Paige

Then I found Paige in her blog, and I must have read the article aft–– like, I was binging her blog reading post after post. I was listening to every design business podcast I could get my hands on. I started reading business books, which was the only time in my life when I had stopped reading fiction or started reading anything other than fiction, I should say. So those books were really good. I have a list of them in an old blog post. I'll try to remember to link here under the video.

Eventually, I realized like this is doable and I could totally make a career out of this and decide what my income was gonna be and decide where I was gonna work and decide what my limitations were gonna be and my policies, and what kind of clients I wanted to work with, and how much I wanted to charge them.

Paige was a big reason for that because I took her Square Secrets Business™️ course. After taking her Square Secrets™️ course to learn how to build my own website. I had built it by that time, maybe two or three times, and was still unhappy with it.

So I took Square Secrets™️, figured out how, like the ins and outs of all the Squarespace things that I hadn't figured out yet, and then obviously I was just hella attached to being a web designer.

So I immediately jumped into Square Secrets Business™️. That course defined to this day, like five years later, much of what I do in my own business.

And I have always enjoyed being in her free Facebook group for the students and I guess I was helpful to the point that they asked me to jump on for the Q&A calls every month. So I get to do that and see all the new students. I'm really honored to be working with them on just a minuscule level.

But she really runs a tight ship over there. She's got tons of helpful information. I still learn from her all the time.

What my life looks like now

our backyard view

After I went full-time in my business, we got a wild hair, and decided to move across the country. I grew up in Georgia. We went to college in Wyoming, we moved back to Georgia and now we're in Vermont in New England.

And it's been kind of a wild ride. We bought this 1890s-era farmhouse; one of those fixer-upper types and we’re completely daunted by the idea of renovating it while feeling simultaneously thrilled to make it our own.

So yeah, I've got a pretty positive outlook ahead. We have this beautiful view behind my head in our backyard and some lovely neighbors and they probably think I'm crazy sitting here on my back patio talking to a camera on my tripod, by myself.

But, you know, whatever...

Inspiration

I really just want to be a point of inspiration for people that you can like literally work like I am in your backyard, under the patio umbrella and the beautiful sunshine.

And your dog can run around in the backyard with you and stay out of your hair and you can still make money because that's what I'm doing. It works.

But it's not like a magical thing. It's taken me many years because I did things very slowly. I DIY for a good three years before I found Paige.

And it was two more years after that before I felt comfortable taking a risk. I am a risk-averse person; taking the leap of faith out of my full-time job felt super scary. But I'm so thankful that I did it because there's just nothing comparable to running the business that you want based on your goals and your dreams and your financial needs. And once you get it working, you just really feel kind of on top of the f*cking world.

That's kind of my backstory. I just wanted to casually pop in here and give you a little peep into what it's like to be Launch the Damn Thing and have some really kick *ss clients show up in your inbox and book out for a few months at a time and be uh, interacting with my groupies in the email inbox and work for my back patio with my dog here who hasn't a care in the world.

How to become a web designer with Square Secrets Business™️

So anyway I'm gonna end that note by sharing again with you. If you're in a spot like I was a few years ago and you feel like you're being called to build your own dreams in your own way, and breakthrough that financial ceiling, and all the struggles that we millennials are having these days, definitely sign up for Paige's Profitable & Productive Web Designer Bootcamp. It opened on April 14, 2023. If you stay all three days, you get Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday that week.

Paige goes live in the group every day at 3:00 PM Eastern for training and some Q&A afterward, and you get unprecedented access to Paige to ask her questions in the group. Plus I will be in there, too!

You'll also get a chance to win the Ultimate Web Designer Starter Kit giveaway prize pack with one of either, you choose, Dubsado or HoneyBook, both of which are CRMs or client relationship management software. You also get one year of Canva Pro and a high-quality professional web design service contract from the Creative Law Shop. Which is one that I've used for years. Altogether, that's worth almost a thousand dollars and they're only giving away one! To enter to win the giveaway, you register and join the Facebook group through the link below, just watch the videos, and submit your homework every day. Then you'll be entered to win. It's that easy!

It's gonna be awesome. So make sure you hop in! It only happens twice a year, so if you miss this group, the next one won't be until this upcoming fall.

I hope to see you inside!